Stranger in the arcade
by planet p
Summary: AU; Emily meets a stranger in an arcade. Emily/Lyle


**Stranger in the arcade** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

**Author's Notes** AU. Emily/Lyle.

* * *

**1984**

Heavy bass beat at the walls, a frenzied dying beast, strapped down and caged in; the walls splashed in gaudy light in mimic of a great distasteful artwork. An in-house gig had centre-stage in the middle of the club, an amphitheatre of lipstick red booths positioned around the featured band. Downstairs, past the bar and powder rooms was the lounge.

xoxo

Lafayette swaggered and keeled over in a chewed-up leather armchair, a puff of air escaping the broken upholstery. He sat, a cigarette balanced between thumb and forefinger, idly observing the way the pulsing lights and strobes danced when caught in the haze of cigarette smoke.

He watched Evangeline dancing barefoot to the music, music that was different to the music upstairs.

Katy's poetry meets drove Lafayette halfway to insanity and back. Lafayette snickered drolly, his attention momentarily on Dobbs.

Katy was leader, and Dobbs second-in-charge. _Checkers_ was reasonably vogue and Katy quite fancied the club. The place had a certain atmosphere about it, she said, oxygen-starved, the sort of place that made a person volatile and giddy.

xoxo

Evangeline staggered forward in a lurch. Stooping, the youngster stuck the gum from his mouth to the underside of the chair, his gaze fixed with the elder man's. Lafayette thrust an arm out, offering the boy a drag of his cigarette. Evangeline slowly straightened, picked the cigarette from the elder's grasp, and took a drag, carefully planting himself above the other man's lap, a leg folded either side of him. Lafayette wore his hair in a crew-cut, closely shaven. Evangeline tilted his head at an obscure angle, and leant in to kiss the man.

Lafayette choked on the smoke and held up his own hands, taking the boy's wrist and pushing him away. "Katy thinks it's time you joined the hunt. Tonight is your night, Geline." He took the cigarette from the ardent youth.

The boy placed his hands flat upon Lafayette's cheeks, their foreheads rested together, depositing a cute little kiss on the end of his nose. "I won't disappoint you," he replied, pulling away with a little giggle.

Lafayette sighed. The kid was stoned!

xoxo

Nigella was waiting by the powder room doors, all dark and pale like the boy. Casting the boy a length ways glance, she started up the stairs. "Alright, follow me. Here's how it works. I look around, pick a target, and you bring them in. Easy enough. Think you can manage that without stuffing it up?"

The twenty-something nodded, possessed. "I don't intend on wasting this opp-" he began, but was silenced by Nigella abruptly raising her black gloved hand, like a slap to the face.

They strolled the streets for some time, Nigella the silent observer, Evangeline the eager Igor. The boy was beginning to shiver, his lips tinging blue beneath his metallic deep purple lipstick, his pale cheeks pink, hands clutching his arms.

They passed clubs and cafés, wandered through games arcades and bars. They came to an abrupt halt in the middle of a bright arcade. "That one!"

Evangeline peered into the multitude of colour and noise, his attention drawn to the flickering television sets and the girl seated in a booth in front.

xoxo

The fifteen-year-old sat reading a comic. She had to get out, just for a little while, before they drove each other completely mad. She didn't mean to run away, nothing like that, just a little breathing space was all she needed.

She didn't notice the boy at first, until he was sitting opposite her, some considerable space between them, and then she pretended not to notice him.

"Hey!"

Lowering her comic, she looked up and met his gaze uncertainly. The first thing she thought was how pretty he was, she almost couldn't breathe. He reminded her of a little porcelain doll, his skin so smooth and pale but where it was flushed from cold, and shivering as though sick in fever. He was adorned in a black cotton net singlet under which he wore a purple tank sploshed with a metallic paint motif and ripped short so that it showed off some midriff, a pair of tight black polyvinyl pants and purple platform boots with black stitching. She noted the tattoo over his right eye, the rosary beads and crucifix, the dog tags, and his long lank hair, cut all at uneven lengths. The boy blinked, his long dark lashes brushing his cheeks, and the trance was broken. She remembered how to breathe, grateful for the dirty air that filled her lungs, too much petrol fumes.

"I'm not bothering you?" he enquired, offering her a chip.

The girl took the offering and immediately popped it in her mouth. "No," she said through chewing her chip.

"What you readin'?" the boy blurted, slouching backward.

The girl shrugged and lifted her comic up off the table top, flashing the front cover. "Just some dumb comic."

The boy sniffed. "Cool, but kinda lame."

The girl snorted. "Yeah."

He dropped his eyes to his fries. "These are nice," he remarked. "What's it about, your comic?" he asked quietly, passing her another chip.

She leant forward and took the chip. "Superman and Lois," she told him, sighing. "I'm going to be just like Lois one day, you know?" After a moment, she laughed. "But I won't be blonde."

Evangeline stared into the green of her eyes, listening to his breathing. "Let's get out of here. These lights are splitting my head."

The girl didn't smile. "I'd like that."

xoxo

The pair walked alongside one another, navigating through crowds of partygoers and smartly-dressed office workers, hands occasionally held.

He took her around the middle and spun her around, ducking down a side alley. He pulled her up close to him and backed her up against a grotty wall, a leg in between her own.

She began to struggle, her eyes wide in horror. He slipped a hand down the back of her track pants, gave her behind a little squeeze. He breathed in a whisper into her neck. "I don't want to hurt you."

She didn't believe that, but then she figured he had meant it as some sort of threat and that if she didn't co-operate he would have to hurt her. She didn't want him to hurt her.

"I'm going to be your friend. Will you be my friend back?"

She shivered, having given up struggling, and raised her chin in a nod.

He caught her mouth in a kiss. "Don't do that. Just say yes. Can you do that for me?"

"Y-yes-s," she replied in a wobbling voice.

"Good." He kissed her again, and pulled away. "Push me."

She started to panic. She didn't understand what he wanted from her.

"Push me away."

She lurched forward and shoved him, so that he smacked into the alley wall opposite. He was laughing. Why was he laughing? She turned to escape but she had barely gotten two paces when he took her around the waist and hugged her from behind. "We're friends now," he told her, planting a kiss on her shoulder. "Just keep walking."

She obeyed.

"Smile."

Again, she obeyed, fixing her face with her best happy face. They stepped out onto the street once more, lost in the world of others.

xoxo

They came to the club quite late. There had been sweets and fizzy drinks and hot chips with too much salt.

She almost wanted to believe that he was her friend.

The security detail didn't ask too many questions. She wanted to yell at them. She was clearly underage. Didn't they care?

He leant in and whispered into her ear as they passed the bar. "Tell me your name."

"Emily."

"That's a lovely name. You don't mind if I call you Fritzi?" he asked quite pleasantly.

"N-no."

He kissed her ear. "Let's try again, shall we? Tell me your name."

"F-Fritzi."

"Very good." He took her around the middle with one arm and they took a right turn. "It's just this way now."

xoxo

"Geline!" came a woman's voice. Katy rushed over. "I was starting to worry. I didn't know where you'd gotten to and then I thought maybe you- Oo. This is nice." She shot him a wink, looking the girl up and down.

Geline stepped away from Emily and Katy walked around her as though to appraise the find. Nigella was always very good with this. She liked this one. She had a pretty face.

Katy picked at the girl's clothes in distain. Well, that could easily be rectified. "Hiiii. I'm Katy," she told Emily in her leering voice, and stuck out her hand quite suddenly as though it were a jousting sword.

Emily took her hand, trying not to let her hand shake and give her nervousness away, but her hand was slippery and she was scared. "Fritzi," she blurted mechanically.

Katy smiled and repeated the name. "Fritzi." She liked it, it was interesting. "Well Fritzi, welcome to my club."

xoxo

They gave her sweets and drinks until she wanted to throw up. She noticed Geline looking unwell and stumbled over to see if they could be unwell together.

By the time she reached the spot she had last seen him he was gone again. She lurched forward and made for one of the powder rooms. She was going to be sick.

He was sitting against the far wall, so either he was in the wrong place or she was. She saw the box of little bottles of this and bandages and ointments for that and the syringes and stormed over. She didn't like drugs.

She fell down in front of him and slapped him across the face, looking angry. He started to slip sideways, his eyes going in his head. Emily slapped him again. "What have you done?" she screamed loudly as though she thought he couldn't hear her. Her voice echoed off the walls and rung horribly in her ears.

"I didn't mean," he mumbled, "-didn't mean to." His eyes dropped to the floor.

She snatched up several items, reading them out silently. He attempted to reach for something but she abruptly snatched it back, reading the label aloud. "Insulin." His eyes had gone funny again so she slapped him. "You're an idiot." She started to shake him. "Tell me how this thing works." And slap him. "Help me."

She had a hard time understanding his instructions, but she was a good listener, and she thought that he deserved the pain if she didn't do this thing right. It was his own fault!

She sat with him leant against her and listened to the racket outside. She just wanted it to be over and to be back in her bed.

xoxo

She got up from the floor and poured him some water from the tap in one of the plastic cups she had found on the bench top.

xoxo

By 2 A.M. she couldn't even stand herself from all the dancing and drinking. She laughed and stuck out her arms and Geline had to run over and catch her before she knocked her skull out.

xoxo

She woke in a white bed where everything felt starchy and new and glared at her. Your own fault, it said. She was hooked up to this machine and that machine. She thought hopefully that she might be in a hospital, but the plastic covering her tiny bedspace and machinery was not like any curtain she had seen in any hospital. She thought stupidly of quarantine.

Katy came up dressed in a white lab coat and told her they were looking after her. She would soon be well again.

They gave her puzzles to preoccupy her time and her head hurt from trying to get just one of them right. Comics were her thing, not any dumb dumb dumb puzzles. She wondered if Geline was dead. He was dumb enough to be dead. Dead dead dead.

They gave her more drugs – sedative, they said – and more puzzles, asked her all sorts of funny questions. She laughed and Katy looked upset so she laughed some more. She wanted to see her visitors now, didn't sick people get visitors?

She was taken out of her plastic room and put in a white room with a bunk. A bunk but no roommate.

They took her to a laboratory where they gave her sedatives and ran more tests, scans. She recognised Dobbs from the club, but he said he was a doctor. She laughed. It was a good joke. But seeing as he wasn't a real doctor, she supposed he should put that away.

They were going to see how her brain centres responded to stimuli, such as pain, so they electrocuted her.

She woke up on the bunk and wished she was dead. There was something wrong with these people.

They cut her hair and made her into their plaything. She had it in her, they would get it out.

xoxo

She was no good for what they wanted her for. She was worthless, a useless liability. But now they knew. Possession did not mean expression, so they supposed it was recessive.

It was a setback, but they would persevere.

xoxo

The club was how they drew them in, then they drugged them and took them back to their hidey hole and poked and prodded and scribbled down notes on what happened. She knew this much, but she didn't know why.

There were others. She knew there had to be others. She had never seen them, but she knew they were there.

Nigella, they said that was her name. She had it to. Emily knew she had what she had, only different. She didn't like to touch things, to touch people. She never took her gloves off, as though it would hurt her.

xoxo

Nigella talked to Emily. She asked her if she had any friends.

"I read comics. People with lives don't read comics."

Nigella watched her. "A boyfriend?"

Emily snorted. "A boyfriend?" she reiterated. "Fat chance!" She laughed.

"You're a pretty girl."

"Nerd. I think the word you're looking for is nerd."

Annoyed was the word Emily would have chosen to describe Nigella at that point.

xoxo

She was still useful Dobbs assured them. He didn't think there was anything further they could do, any way they could bring this thing out, wake something up that would not be woken up. What had Nigella given them? A load of bullshit. For all of her worth, for all of her experience – a load of bullshit.

She was useful Dobbs stressed. She was young and fit and female. Useful.

"Will you just listen to me, Ruth!" Dobbs exploded, at his wits end.

Katy snorted. "Tell us then," she said, although she was quite alone aside from Dobbs, "of her usefulness. There is no reason not to schedule her for termination. She is not fit for our purpose. She knows too much. _Schedule her for termination and be done, Simpson._"

Dobbs glared. Katy didn't understand these things. She expected results pronto. "She could potentially prove far more useful than any of us realise, Ruth. Until we know for sure, hold off your plans. She has the anomaly. We know this. And as it is recessive – something we were not aware of in the fore – I am of the strong belief we should take this opportunity to study her, study this." He sighed. "In the mean time, she would be perfect for our experiments on term. Breed her with a dominant. In the off-chance, we might strike it lucky and the child will be dominant."

"_If_ the child survives," Katy shot begrudgingly, because it was a big if. She cast around the room. "Oh very well, have your fun, but be it on you, Simpson. I am holding you personally responsible for the progression of this… _venture_."

Dobbs did not slacken his glare. "I suppose this is thank you." He nodded and swept from the room without another word.

xoxo

Emily was taken to a large room they called the Rec. Emily played table tennis against the wall. She was very bad, but at least in table tennis she couldn't fall and scrape her knees.

She kicked the ping pong ball around the room and pretended she was playing soccer, jeering loudly when she scored a point. But she was terrible at it and the ball kept skitting away too fast.

Dobbs had said she could play a game of sport or the likes. She was playing a game of sport. She could work on her fitness levels. She had wanted to knee him, but she would have to work on her fitness levels first.

She lay down on the table tennis table, tired.

The door opened sometime later. She supposed that it would be Dobbs. God, if he got any more up himself he might- Implode, she thought with a wicked smile.

She dived off the table. "Bing badda boom!"

Dobbs stood beside Geline. She hated how he watched her, as though she were lesser than him and anything she did fascinated him.

Geline looked a little disturbed. Apparently girls jumping off tables disturbed him.

She grinned, tossed her head and swaggered over. "Brought me a friend?" she asked, accentuating her American drawl.

Dobbs turned to Geline. "Evan here- Evan wanted to know how you were. I suggested he come and see you himself."

"Evan?" Emily mused, looking him up and down. This was fun! She stomped over and walked around him, shooting Dobbs an excuse-me-very-much as he stepped out of her way. She stuck out her hand. "Hiiiii, I'm _Freddie_."

Geline offered his hand and she shook it enthusiastically.

"We can be friends," she sprung happily, remembering a doll she had once seen in a toy store. "We can play games. Games are fun. Freddie _likes_ to do fun things with her friends."

Geline looked across at Dobbs.

"Yes, well, I think I'll leave you two to it," Dobbs said, backing out of the room, his hands clapped together.

Emily sprung in the air, and waved her hand madly. "Bye!"

The door slid shut and they were left alone in the room.

Emily dived forward and took Geline's hand and tugged on it for him to follow. She dragged him across the room to where the table tennis table was pushed up against the wall and bounced on her heels. "If you help me move this we can play together," she chimed, and picked up the ping pong ball and chucked it at his head. "So will you? Oh please say you will!"

Geline didn't have on his happy smile, disappointingly, Emily thought. "Okay."

She took one corner and waited for him to do the same and they pulled the table away from the wall. "Okay," Emily began, "This can be my side and that side," she pointed, standing on tippee toes and extending her arm to its full length, "can be yours." She giggled and dashed off, promising, "I'll be back." She returned a moment later with a second bat. "This is for you." She picked up her own bat off the floor. "And this is mine." She ran to fetch the ball. "And this we share."

They played table tennis for some time, Emily shouting very loudly whenever there was a foul or a score.

"Do you think I'm bad?" Emily asked in a bad voice.

Geline looked around the room. "I dunno."

Emily stepped up to him. "Do I _poke_ people?" she asked, poking him in the shoulder with her finger. "And _prod_ them?" She poked him again. "Ooo!" Poke. "Ahh!" Prod.

Geline stepped back from her, worried. "Are you okay?"

Emily rearranged her expression into one of all seriousness. "Freddie likes to do _fun_ things with her friends. Games are fun. We can play games." She sprung forward. "Truth or dare?"

"Wh-" He shook his head. "What?"

"Truth or dare!" she chimed, keeping his gaze.

"Tr-truth."

She grinned, her best trustworthy grin. "Dooo yooou- work for bad people?"

Geline started to shake his head. "N- Yes."

"Your turn," she shot hurriedly.

"Truth or dare?"

"Dare," she chimed.

"G-give me your pullover."

Emily snorted, watching him carefully. She pulled her pullover off over her head and chucked it at him. "My turn! Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"Katy, she's the evil sorceress!"

"Yes."

She grinned, giggling. "Your turn!"

"Truth or dare?"

"Dare!"

"Your- Your track pants, take them off."

Emily pulled her track pants off, white like her pullover, and dropped them on the floor. She wasn't scared. "My turn! Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"The evil sorceress likes parties. She invites children and gives them candy that makes them sleep, and whilst they're sleeping, she takes them and locks them away in a cupboard in her castle!"

"Yes."

Emily smiled, but the humour was lost. "Your turn!"

"Truth or dare?"

"Dare!"

"Take your tee shirt off."

Emily took the hem of her tee shirt, watched the blush that crept into his face, and tugged it up over her head. "My turn. Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

She didn't smile. "Do you wanna see me naked?"

She expected him to flinch, to look away. He did none of those things, instead he answered. "Yes."

His voice was plain. It pissed her off. "Your turn."

"Truth or dare?"

She smiled. "Dare."

"Slap yourself."

She raised her hand and smacked herself hard across the face. "My turrrn! Truth or dare?" Her voice had a satisfied edge to it.

"Dare."

She took a step toward him, strode right up to him, and bit her lip. "Fuck. Me."

He lunged forward and seized her upper arms and pushed her backward. She came up against the table tennis table with a thud. He dropped his hands to her backside and slid her undies off her chubby bottom, lifting her up onto the table. She shivered but did not try to stop him. He trailed his hand along her leg to her foot where her undies dangled from one ankle. He unzipped the fly on his jeans and she grinned, waiting for him to do his thing.

She tried to say something, like they did on the movies, but it occurred to her that it would sound stupid.

She had read about it before, in Harmony's books, but it wasn't the same. It was different.

It was okay, she supposed. But that was what the chemicals wanted her to think, because she knew all about the chemicals. If it wasn't fun, then nobody would do it, and no babies would be made, and the species would die out.

Babies! She didn't want a baby!

"Get- Get off!" she grunted, shoving him off her.

xoxo

Emily pulled her undies on and stomped off to collect the remainder of her clothes and put them back on too.

There was going to be no talking. And they weren't friends anymore.

xoxo

Emily lay on her stomach on the bottom bed of her bunk. "You're a pretty girl," she imitated Nigella's prim voice. "Nerd," she scowled, raising her voice to a scream, "I think the word you're looking for is nerd!" She punched her stupid white pillow and dropped her head into it and cried.

xoxo

It was one day, three weeks later, that Dobbs told her that she was pregnant and he wanted to know how that had happened. Of course, he knew how that had happened, so she told him she had been sucking her thumb and – pop! – she had a funny feeling in her stomach, and that must have been when it had happened, so she wasn't going to suck her thumb again or there might be two.

She thought it was splendidly amusing and laughed for a good minute. Dobbs did not seem to share her humour.

The drugs they gave her made her woozy and disorientated. She was taken back to the bed with the plastic sheeting walls.

* * *

**2007**

Sedna came from the Inuit language and meant well-fed. Lyle had been transferred to Alaska in 2001 and hadn't been back to Delaware in six years. Sedna was the closest one could get to the likes of civilisation away from the facility. The township was small and isolated. The drive there was a good 10 miles.

He came to the diner to get away for a while.

He noticed her right away. She wore a little apron and had a nervous habit of tightening the knot on the tie which came around her waist to the front.

He pretended as though he hadn't been watching her when she came up to the booth by the window where he sat. "What can I get for you today?" she chimed in her customers-come-back-when-one-is-polite voice.

"A black coffee tah, no sugar."

"I think I can manage that," she replied, without her earlier cheerfulness.

When she turned and walked away, stiff as though uncomfortable, he pretended not to notice that too.

"Enjoy your coffee now won't you, sir," she said mechanically, placing a mug down on the table top with a dull chink.

"Will do," he replied winningly, now staring at his coffee.

xoxo

Emily stood leant against the wall. The sounds of the kitchen hurt her head and the stupid sheet of paper tacked to the wall that showed how to correctly compile a steak sandwich pissed her off, but she wasn't going back out there.

Her nose had started to run and her eyes felt gooey but all she did was stand there with the back of her head pressed to the wall.

She couldn't make her muscles move if she had wanted to. She was immobile.

xoxo

'84 had been his fist year on Field and he had been assigned to gather information on a rival corporation, never mind the goings on, just get the information and try not to get killed in the process and you were a sure thing.

They weren't a big organisation, a backyard operation really, LangdonPellant had never been much more, as far as he knew, and he had been keeping reasonable track.

LangdonPellant still believed what they had discovered that year, the expression could indeed exist in a recessive unexpressed form, and such was their conviction. Various others, including the Center believed this also to be true, and it wasn't as though Lyle could be bothered whether it was true or not – fuck, no!

So, '84… LangdonPellant, Soza, Jool…

But the year had clocked over by that time. He sipped his coffee and thought of his little Jool, all grown up now, and he had no fucking idea where, but he liked it that way. He hoped to God she hadn't inherited expression from him, but it would most likes turn out that she had, he'd never had any luck with prayers.

Her mother would think that she was dead, born at four and a half months, and without Healer assistance, nothing but the drugs, but he couldn't let that happen, and the girl so sick, so he had done what he could, because he was no Healer, and it had cost him fairly at the time, but he had gotten better again, because that was all he had, he had nothing but to go on.

Now here he was, and there she was, and that horrible horrible space between.

xoxo

The television was on, muted. He wasn't really in the mood for television, wasn't really in the mood for anything, but it was what she was watching, so he supposed she must have found it comforting in a distracting sort of way.

xoxo

Emily sat with her feet up on the sofa, television blaring. She fell asleep that way, but when she woke it was still dark.

She hated that she would wake some obscure hour of the morning, and it was so hard to get back to sleep, and then it was work again, and she was so tired.

She hated him too, and she didn't care, tried her best not to care. _There are two kinds of people_, she hadn't written in her diary, _true enough, good people and bad people. You don't hate good people, but you do hate bad people. Bad people don't go unloved, but they deserve not to be thought upon kindly, and if you should so hate them, that is okay, because they deserve that._

As a girl, her mother had read to her from the bible bedtimes. She had quite tired of it. She read Harmony's books or her comics when she could, to get away from her mother's penchant for unremitting repetition of that dull book, but she understood now that everyone deserved their beliefs. And so, she believed that Lyle Parker should burn in hell, and not that she believed in hell, but if that would assist his passage there to, she would sure start believing.

On a good day, she thought upon the prospect fondly.

But good days came few and far between, and she wished she could just pretend like Jarod did, where the world was black and white, and people were good or bad.

She supposed consideration could not be undone or cheated, once one had it, they had it for life, no matter whether they acted it or not. The trick was not to let it near, not to catch it, because then you would never know, and you would never think to know, and bad people would be bad and good people would be good and there would be no space in between for doubt.

She didn't really know where she had caught it, only that she wished she hadn't, because it kept trying to make her feel at fault even though she knew she had more than enough right by the laws of physics.

If she thought about it, it confused her and made her frustrated, and then her head would start on hurting, and she thought that if she could just somehow stop thinking about it until the point when she was dead and her fate be decided on her character then, she would feel a lot better.

Of course, that was not the satisfactory way for things to work, because then people would do just what they wished, whenever, but – come on! – she wasn't breaking any laws.

She sat in the dark, having turned the television off now, and didn't count the time, because it only made it worse the next day and the next after that and so on.

xoxo

Her job sucked! No actually, that might have been her whole life!

She wished he would just go away, or take her away, but not just pretend like he didn't know who she was when she knew damn well he knew that she knew he did. It pissed her off, and if that was his game, that pissed her off even more.

Perhaps he was fixing for her to tell him to fuck off, and then he would be justified in handing her over to the Center as Jarod bait. She snickered at the thought, or maybe he just wanted to kill her, because after all, she hadn't died, and that must have taken a chink out of his neat little résumé, the part where it commended reliability.

But then again, he could have been feeling down. She knew how much he hated not being boss. It wasn't about itty bitty feelings, it was simply about him being a sociopathic control freak, and everyone knew sociopaths didn't have real feelings; they just liked to imagine they did.

She wasn't going to let herself be afraid of him. Fear was another thing aside from caution. Caution was rational, fear was just stupid, stupid that people always jumped on the bandwagon and forgot all about a little thing called understanding because out of sight, out of mind was always more comforting and far less taxing in the questions department. As soon as you tried to understand something – bam! – questions. Man, oh man, she hated the questions, but seeing as she had resolved that there would be no questions, because there could be no question, she was good. So now all she needed to do, was figure out his battle plan – no, wait – _evil_ battle plan.

The logic seemed to add up. But God, she felt cheap and petty!

xoxo

"You mind if I sit here?" she asked as she placed his coffee down on the table, pausing and watching him for his response.

"No," he replied, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, and just a little bit stupid for his expansive vocabulary.

"I'm on break," she told him, sipping her own coffee, elbows on the table.

He refrained from comment on how rude it was putting one's elbows on the table, less out of feeling hypocritical than just not giving a shit; not that he wouldn't have said so, but it was just one of these habits that he had picked up, and just didn't feel like blurting out the obvious. Actually, he didn't feel much like responding at all.

She sat watching him not watching her, kind of hoping on that it would be making him uncomfortable, and he would tell her to stop it, then she could tell him to leave if he didn't want her staring at him, dumbarse.

xoxo

She felt far from comfortable there right opposite him, but then, she felt a little brave too, stupid, but brave, and that made her feel better.

xoxo

He had hoped she would ask some question that he could think up some suitable lie for, but she didn't ask, and he just kept waiting for her to ask to keep his mind off the silence.

She was bound to ask.

She cared, just like Jarod did, because there were always innocent people caught in the crossfire. She would be dying to know this and that, and then she might go on and on about how she disapproved, just the way Jarod would, nagging nagging nagging… A person could die that way.

But she wasn't Jarod, who really felt lousy because he was Parker's brother and Catherine's son and there was not a damn thing to do to help, to make him better. Jarod just didn't get it. He _liked_ the way he was!

He could have smacked her across the face to get her to say something.

xoxo

He hadn't looked up, and she was starting to feel very much uncomfortable, but mostly very stupid, because she realised she actually _didn't_ want to wind up dead.

She managed to reassure herself she would be fine, it was all a game to him, and it wasn't even started, up until the moment when she wanted to kick him under the table, and that was some other part of her altogether, and she started feeling funny in the stomach and thought maybe she would be sick on him, and then she would be both fired _and dead_.

She stood abruptly, seizing upon the manager shooting her a disapproving glance from across the dining area, almost empty mug of now stone cold coffee in hand, and smoothed the back of her skirt down, leaving the table with an annoyed, "Irritable geezer."

xoxo

Relieved, and refraining from hitting his head on the tabletop, Lyle placed his mug at the farthest end of the table, closet to the window, and left, too bad if she had a hard time reaching it or someone got a look down her top.

He smiled, thinking it quite amusing.

xoxo

Emily stacked several plates together from the surrounding tables, put them on one table, and wiped the tables down. She plonked herself down on the seat, wishing little kids could just keep their food in their mouths _and their hands_ out of their mouths, and leant across for the mug by the window, before collecting up the lot and taking them off to be washed in the kitchen.

xoxo

It had to be about 8 P.M., a half hour until the supermarket shut up for the night. Emily had needed to get out, so she was walking from aisle to aisle trying not to think about Jarod and his bloody Pez addiction because she was so not going to buy Pez. She mouthed, "Oh man", and just kept walking. She was sure it wasn't genetic or anything, she had never even had Pez in her life.

She spotted a row of fresh apples and made a beeline in their direction. Apples, unlike Pez, were healthy.

So she was standing over in front of the apples, wondering if she should get one or more than one, because how would it look getting just one apple, but then she discovered she really only had the change for one apple beside, having left her bag in the car along with her wallet, which was out in the car park, and it would look even more ridiculous going out just to come back in, so she picked a nice red apple, and turned around and screamed. "You moron!"

Lyle grinned, seeming to think it funny sneaking up on her like that, but she just wanted to kill him so she couldn't understand why he was smiling like that.

She restrained herself from hitting him, and stormed right past him, fixing her face with the most horrible look she could just at that moment.

The boy serving the register took a step back, and she dropped the glower guiltily, handing over her change.

"Enjoy your evening," the boy said, and she smiled, but he was already looking around for a potential customer who might save him from her reply.

She left without any departing words and feeling rotten.

xoxo

She laughed when she spotted Lyle leant against her car, because she was quite fond of her car and she didn't want Lyle germs on it.

She stomped over to him, grabbed an arm, and hauled him away from the door. "Get… off…!"

Lyle pushed her away from him, angry, and she stumbled back, smacking into the door, and glared. Sick of him, she walked right up to him and shoved him back.

"I'll hit you, I swear!" she warned, her voice on an edge.

He slapped her hard across the face.

She raised her hand to slap him back but he had taken her wrist and pushed her back against the car. She glared right back.

She didn't like him being that close to her. She couldn't breathe properly and she didn't trust him one bit.

"Let me the fuck go!" she screamed, hysterical and altogether too dramatically. She pulled her wrist out of his hold, wrenched the door to the car open, and wasted no time in reversing out of there.

xoxo

It was like that a lot for her, her relationships, combative. Margaret and she couldn't be in the same room without some argument ensuing; Jarod just pissed her off a lot of the time without actually doing anything to piss her off, it was just that she refrained most times from action because she knew that it was stupid; and that bloody Lyle she just wanted to die horribly.

She got back to her flat and stalked off to the poky laundry room and slammed herself down in the corner, knees up to her chest, and reminded herself to breathe. She had to be careful not to hyperventilate or go into an attack.

She hated that she was bloody asthmatic. Her brothers hadn't been, and it was one more thing for her mother to hold against her. Bloody female, bloody asthmatic, bloody defective because she wasn't a fucking Pretender!

She snorted and sobbed into her knees. She was pathetic and she wanted a hug, and even that was pathetic.

She sat huddled in the corner, alone with the dark.

xoxo

She was talking on the phone off the wall when he came in, discussing inventory and the recent game, scribbling the odd note here and there, and when she was done, she stalked up to the counter and forced a smile. "What'll it be?"

"Maybe we could talk, when you've got break?"

She turned around and stalked off to get him a coffee. "Your coffee," she said, making her way over to the window where he sat, and placed it down on the table there, and didn't tell him to pay later because he had paid the other girl and she wasn't going to go on and make a fool of herself by pretending she hadn't noticed.

He took her arm when she made to straighten up and leave. She shot him a glare. She bet he wasn't much into public scenes. He released her arm and she stalked away across the room and into the kitchen.

xoxo

As if he imagined she would actually want to talk to him after last night's episode! She scoffed. He was insane if that's what he thought.

She scrubbed a pot, tucking the hair in her face away behind her ear, and getting dishwashing water and foam on her face and hair.

xoxo

She remembered bright light. She thought that it seemed as though it were alive. It had arms, more like tentacles, and she felt where it touched her, simply not as bad as before, soothed.

They had left her, took the child. She slipped in and out of consciousness, not knowing what was real and what was not.

The drugs didn't help. She thought vaguely that they had seemed to make it worse, this feeling as though she was slipping away, and the horrible pain, too much blood and too much pain. She couldn't remember anymore where it began and ended because it was everything, couldn't remember where it had started, it hurt all over.

He had been asking her a question but she hadn't understood. She had been trying so hard. He held her hand and asked her questions, and grubby tears rolled down along his pretty cheeks, makeup smudged and running. She was confused. Why was he crying?

He held her hand as though he thought she would pull away and walk out. How could she leave like this? Cut all open. She knew now they weren't coming back to fix her, to make her better, stitch her up.

He kissed her hand and reached it out across her abdomen, his hand shaking even as it held her own and her limbs went slack, her eyes went in her head.

The light changed it seemed to her, to weaken and strengthen again, and the same again, until it seemed as though it had lost some of its strength, and it was just a boy once more and the boy took her up and held her to him and she felt safe as she lost consciousness for the land of sleep.

xoxo

Emily stood leant against the wall, a hand on her abdomen, and frowned. It hardly made any sense.

She had never spoken to her mother of the things that had been done to her, not even to Harmony, and by the time she was older and her small family seemed to have grown, she had put it away in her mind and tried her best to lose it in some shabby storeroom hardly bigger than a closet.

She had used to dream about it, she recalled, but it had been distant and vague, all wrong, all mixed up. She hadn't fully recalled for such a long time, when she had woken up in hospital and a stranger told her that he was her brother, Jarod.

The baby had been a girl, and her name was Jool. They had never even let her hold her, touch her. She had been slurring badly. Katy, she remembered, had declined when she had asked to be able to hold her Jool, her baby, and then she had said that she, Emily, would be fine, that they would be back just as soon as they could and in the meantime, they would give her something to make her feel better. They had taken the infant, and the room was suddenly empty, but so full, the pain filling the emptiness left with increasing force.

Geline – or was it Evan? – he had seemed just there, but she knew that he had come in through the door, the way he would go out again.

She needed to tell him, but sleep had taken her so suddenly, and those things she had struggled so hard to hold onto, slipped suddenly from her grip.

She didn't know what had happened to Jool, what had became of the tiny life, if she had survived?

Emily rubbed at her cheeks and pushed away from the wall.

xoxo

She took his arm, out in the car park. "Jool?" she said, and ignored the look he gave her.

He shrugged and it almost seemed as though he did not much care what had happened to his daughter. "I do not know beyond that she survived."

Emily laughed. It wasn't good enough. She raised a hand and slapped him hard across the face.

* * *

Starr grinned, shooting her best friend, Doone, a significant look, who was smiling also. They had been watching the boy selling tickets at the Jumping Castle, and Doone had just dared Starr to ask him his name.

"His name is Ethan," Starr laughed, shaking her head. He was cute, but he was no boy, he was surely older than either of them, and beside, he wasn't her type.

Doone turned to her and she had on that look, the look she got when she thought Starr was acting the killjoy, when she would profess herself unimpressed.

"Prove me false," Starr teased, giggling, and pushed the woman opposite her in the shoulder, "go and ask his name."

Doone tilted her head, that disapproving look deepening to a frown.

"Chicken."

Doone crossed her arms tightly and strode on up to that Jumping Castle, feeling stupid standing in line with all those eager little kids.

"I'm not buying or anything," Doone announced clearly, once there were no more in front and it was her turn, "I wanted to ask you if your name was Ethan. My friend over there," and she nodded, "thinks it is, and I think it's bullshit."

"Um, yeah."

Doone watched him sceptically, and unimpressed.

"Yeah, my name is Ethan," he went on, sounding unsure.

Doone watched him for a further moment; then she laughed and turned and walked away.

"It's Doone!" Starr shouted loudly as Doone stormed back toward her, and then ran, because Doone could have killed her for screaming that.

xoxo

Starr was leant against the back of a fast food van, breathing hard. She turned her head and grinned.

Kyle grinned back. "You're a star!"

xoxo

A hand reached around from behind him and placed a paper cup and plastic lid down on the table. Ethan took a sip of the coffee and turned to Jarod, leant on the table.

"So, nobody knows the girl."

Ethan sighed, took another sip.

"And how was your day?" Jarod asked plainly, pretending as though he wasn't asking in response to Ethan's great enthusiasm.

"Fantastic."

Jarod frowned, suddenly interested.

"It was just some schoolgirls kidding around," Ethan huffed.

Jarod scoffed.

"It's not funny," Ethan told him, unamused.

xoxo

Starr was a nurse, that was how she had met Doone.

The little girl was Jay, the little girl the man was looking for. Jay was eight. Starr didn't know any more.

She dreamt of Jay, and sometimes, when she was awake, and on the ward…

She thought of telling the man, but what would he think of her, and what would Ethan think of her, and what would he think of Doone for having a friend like her?

Doone dragged her arm toward a ride, and the rest of her followed.

Kyle watched from where he stood, as though it were his post, raised his hand in a wave.

She shot him a horrible look. Off she went to her doom, and his response was to wave merrily!

xoxo

The ride made her tummy feel sick, and she had to sit down, the fat stuffed thing Doone had won on some game earlier seated beside her.

She smacked her head on the table. Oh joy at being plush and stuffed and unaware of breath and worry!

xoxo

"Jarod!"

Jarod turned, the hand having fallen from his arm, and gazed at the young woman, a gigantic stuffed animal under arm.

"The little girl you're looking for, Jay, I had a dream about her."

Her hair was lank and ratty, dyed fake mahogany, and the colours of her clothes too bright and mismatched: bold shiny red leggings accompanied by a purple skirt, big yellow polka dots across it, tall white boots and a blue Mickey Mouse shirt.

He laughed. He didn't think her funny at all. He turned to go before he told her exactly what he thought of her type, the type that professed psychic abilities in exchange for sums of money, the type who gave false hope and dug the wounds deeper. He had nothing to say to her, nothing good so he would say nothing.

"No. Wait."

But he didn't wait.

"My name is Starr," she called, and he didn't bother to suppress the laugh, but it wasn't out of hilarity.

xoxo

She smacked her head on the table, no joy at being alive.

xoxo

The radio bashed into the gloom. Starr sat in a corner of the kitchen, kitchen cupboards at her back, feet bare on cold tile.

She wore flannel Mickey Mouse p-jays, cupboard handle digging into her ribs. The only light came through the window from the street.

She lay her head down in his lap and Kyle could not envy her anything.

* * *

The boy sat with his legs crossed, sat on a chair across the room.

Thomas lay in a white bed in a white room, connected to a machine and various pieces of instrumentation. The room was silent for those persistent machines.

The boy closed his eyes for the hurt in them, sharp white walls having done so.

The room was underground, nothing but trees and earth up there.

Thomas had been dead, true enough, and he hadn't planned for this exactly, and it might well have killed him, but he had had to do something to stop it. He thought that he might die, and then he would surely be with her, but no, no such luck. He had been looking forward to dying, to being with her again, and he was disappointed then, but at least the overwhelming urge had seemed to have shifted into obscurity out of focus.

He hadn't been down here so long. Three days. But he couldn't go back this way, looking the way he did. It was hardly fair, he thought, and he had wanted this time to simply pass, just die. No, it wasn't fair.

xoxo

He remembered that she had worn a yellow dress, a plain yellow dress, their wedding day, and she can't have been more beautiful.

Annie was dressed in her school clothes. She had just started that week and was already looking forward to it ending.

They sung _Blue Moon_ together, multicoloured confetti in her hair. Edna was going for an interview in two days, up at the public hospital in town. He was so proud.

* * *

He hadn't been in for some days, not that Emily could care, but she was somewhat put-out.

She sat out in the cold, feet in the gutter, and smoked the occasional cigarette. She couldn't care less what anyone thought, it could never be any closer than distant. She was having a shitty mood was all.

He pulled her up by the arm and she laughed, stumbled, coughed, took another drag of the cigarette before he took it off her. She laughed, watching the cigarette lying on the ground as he dragged her away to the car. He was going to start on about her asthma, she knew, and she would just laugh, just as she was laughing now.

He wrenched the passenger's side door open and bundled her into the car, went around the other side and slammed the door too too loud, turned and looked across at her, not happy at all.

"We're headed into Malley."

She scoffed, noted that he had been to get her things, they were there on the back seat. "You sending me away?" she laughed incredulously.

He put the car into gear, didn't reply, pulled away from the curb and the sign announcing NO STANDING ANY TIME.

She snorted – typical retard! She turned the radio on, turned it up, hoped it pissed him off and he left her by the wayside. She could get eaten by wolves, stamped by those big deer things, freeze to death…

xoxo

"Do you like this station?"

He ignored her, same as he had been doing for- oh, she didn't know…

She drummed her hands on the dash. "Boooooored…" Hummed along to the track playing, sang the bits she knew. She made up the lyrics to a song she didn't know.

xoxo

She sat in the car, unenthusiastic written all over her face. If he wanted her out, he would have to pull her out, and then chuck her things out after her.

He got her a ticket on the bus, came back to the car and passed it to her. She looked at it, looked away. "I need a coffee. Cigarette'd be good."

"You are not bloody smoking!"

She snorted. "Oh, you going to stop me?"

"I damn well will!"

She watched him with clear distaste. "You do that."

xoxo

It was crap coffee, out of a paper cup, little wonder. She sat on the bench and he stood leant, back to the wall, watching the platform for trains arriving or departing. The radio played nearby over a speaker here and there, nothing so clear.

She smiled at the song that had just come on. It was her favourite. He had turned to regard her for a moment as though he might have known. She watched him watching her for a moment, made a face at the coffee, and looked away again.

She stood and left the platform, passing a sign reading BUS TICKETS SOLD HERE, out to the car park where the bus times and routes would be listed on a marker that indicated where the bus stop was located, no shelter or bench to signify such.

She hummed _Build It Up Buttercup_ as she strolled back to the platform from the openness of the car park, uncovered.

He was standing with his forehead pressed to the wall, might have felt sick. She came up beside him, leant there on the wall. "You feel sick?" Plain, no concern wasted, a question and no more. "Hey!"

She took his arms and turned him to face her, and then because he wasn't answering her and she was in a horrible mood, she kissed him.

xoxo

The toilet was hardly clean. She sure would have had issues if she worked selling those damn tickets, but as it was, she didn't, so she had very little concern aside from the initial thought, and damn, she would avoid the place in future, go some place else, some place in town perhaps, where there were shops.

She hadn't minded the wall so much, only, it was a public place, so she figured, it wasn't really appropriate.

Now she stared at another wall and wondered at the amount of utter shit people wrote in toilets.

It might have been stupid. She didn't care.

She wondered about this wife she had heard he had had, and felt stupidly jealous of her, even dead as she was, stupid silly cow.

Her back hurt – it seemed as though it always hurt these days, the time spent hunched over sink and dishes needing washing – and she needed a bloody ciggie.

xoxo

She missed the bus, her hair was a mess, she needed a ciggie even more than before, and he was offering her bloody jelly dinosaurs that would only make her fat and ugly.

She picked at the band aid on her finger on the drive back to Sedna, chewed one of those fattening jelly things.

She tossed a jelly at him but he didn't look around, so she put her feet up on the seat, knees to her chest.

* * *

He called himself Jason. Jason cleaned at the Rada Complex, an expansive shopping complex, plaza sort of set up. It was a shitty job, but it was a job, with pretty decent hours if he didn't complain over hours and treatment, and he knew he wouldn't or else there would be no job and no job meant no money which meant no nothing.

He picked daisies by the road so he would have flowers for Edna when he visited her. She had always liked daisies. An occasional car would pass, but he seldom noticed until the car was long gone and he was simply recalling. They grew by the roads, the weeds, the daisies with them, perhaps even weeds themselves.

He might pass by Catherine, the stone face pronouncing her death, but he wouldn't pause, wouldn't bring her flowers or say some little word, and he avoided Annie just the same.

He would sit with his head pressed to cold stone, saying nothing, trying to recall that feeling, love. Sometimes he felt as though he had it within his reach, but then it would scurry scared from his breath, because he couldn't hold it for that long.

xoxo

He lay on the floor, cold as it was, watching the ceiling but not perceiving such.

It was in the night time that Thomas woke.

Some awful alternative rock played from upstairs, the windows all open, the storm invited freely in, and Jason lying on the floor as though catatonic.

It made no sense to Thomas, but what exactly made no sense, he was uncertain, specific objections, clear debate, they were not there.

He lay listening to the storm, feeling a sort of relief, the aliveness of the storm an affirmation of his own living.

* * *

Jarod found Starr at the hospital, in her nurse's uniform, coffee from the machine down the hall.

She wouldn't talk to him. Why should she?

"Starr? You said that was your name?"

Her pace remained unfaltering as he followed.

"I wanted to apologise- want to apologise. I was inconsiderate and horrible. I thought we could talk sometime. It doesn't have to be today, or the day after. I guess it comes down to conviction of your belief, if you believe you _can_ help, if you really _want_ to help."

Starr stopped abruptly, turned, fixed Jarod with a nasty look. "I'm not going to accept your apology. I won't talk with you here. Starbucks, on Waller. I like the coffee."

xoxo

Ethan sat with Jarod some table in Starbucks. Jarod was anxious, not in the mood to drink anything. Ethan had gotten himself a coffee.

Starr arrived some half an hour after they had taken a table, Doone along with her, and the two women got coffees before coming to the table and taking seats.

"I came, you see."

Ethan held out his hand, momentarily abandoning his coffee. "Ethan." He shook Doone's hand. Starr didn't immediately reciprocate and offer her own, only after she had regarded Ethan for a moment, and Ethan was left wondering what it was exactly Jarod had done or said to disincline her to him so strongly, that was until he shook her hand, but he tried not to let his confusion show quite so literally as he felt it.

She wouldn't introduce herself, assuming that Jarod had already done as much. "I'm going to tell you straight that I don't trust either of you."

Doone watched her friend in something recalling mild shock.

"My mental state is not your concern, so long as I do not do something that which would make it so. I don't intend on asking after your histories. It would be nice if you showed the same courtesy."

Jarod made no comment, simply nodded.

"I believe the term with which you are familiar… is Empath…?"

"You believe you are an Empath?"

Starr smiled, having expected such a reaction. "I'm really not in the mood for bullshit, so if you're not interested in the ravings of a clearly demented personality, I strongly fucking suggest we make this a brief goodbye." She got hastily to her feet.

"Sit down," Jarod said. "I am very interested in what you have to say, which is not to say that I am convinced of you nor your trustworthiness. But, by all means, do continue."

Ethan sighed. This was really starting to be getting too much. Doone had this look about her that seemed congruent. He was by no means discounting the need for some sort of understanding of who could and could not be trusted in this game, but sometimes it could be handled better without the bitching.

"Jay. She is eight this year. She is missing. Four months. It doesn't look good."

Jarod nodded. "Basically. Is there nothing you have to add?"

"That isn't fair."

Jarod watched her closely.

"I need something of Jay's."

He grinned. "Of course."

Starr was not appreciative. "I'll meet tomorrow, same time. Have it by then." With that, she stood and left.

Doone stared after her. For one, she had had nil to no idea what they were both on about, and for seconds, she hadn't finished her damn coffee.

"I know the feeling," Ethan agreed. Jarod shot him an odd look.

xoxo

"What the hell is an Empath?"

Ethan leant into the table, smiling conspiratorially. "Basically," he said, in imitation of Jarod, who was off getting himself a coffee just now, "a freaky psychic phenomenon."

"She sees dead people?"

"That's a tricky question to answer, because I don't know. Best I would be able to describe Empathy as is a sort of observation of a replay of events, but not in all that a helpful sort of manner…"

"Kind of freaky?"

"Yeah." Ethan sighed. "How long have you been friends?"

Doone smiled. "Five months."

"Five. Good sort of… odd number."

"Prime too."

"Quite right. Odd and prime. Tricky, that number."

Jarod returned to the table, frowning.

"Have I got some sort of great big spot on my face?"

"Nope."

"You're staring."

Jarod sat down and stopped staring at Ethan.

"So, I didn't catch your name," Doone admitted.

"Jarod."

"Yup, I'm gonna remember that one. _Supernatural_, Sam Winchester – To. Die. For."

Ethan grinned. Jarod looked worried.

"And you're Ethan?"

"That's me. Ethan."

"So you're friends?"

"Brothers."

Doone smiled hugely, obviously thinking of the television program she had earlier mentioned. She had finished her coffee, and presently regained her feet, shaking both their hands. "It was great meeting you both, if this is the first and last time. You two have a wonderful evening and I will just endeavour to do the same."

Ethan waved. "Tootles."

Doone stopped at the door. "Loo-lah."

Once she had gone, Jarod gave Ethan this look that said 'Quit with the tootles already.'

* * *

Nia ran a hand over her hair, leant on a wall, any wall, couldn't be stuffed to care in which room she stood, what wall exactly she was leant against.

Jarod kept trying to reassure her it would all work itself out for the better, but she could not believe that. Jay was bloody missing. Her child was missing!

* * *

The blue cardigan had been placed, neat and folded, upon the table. Starr picked at a button, but did not take the thing up. They were pretty buttons, the shape of little teddies.

Jarod watched her intently. Ethan had allowed himself to be talked into coming along, and Mo thought it could be cool.

Mo, Jarod's clone, had adopted a mix of punk, street and Goth.

Jarod had expected Starr to make comment on Mo, but she had scarcely spared him half a glance, taking her seat in a hasty manner.

"This was a gift, from you to Jay?" she said after some many moments.

"Yes."

Starr nodded. "You are acquainted with her mother?"

"I am."

She nodded again, and closed her eyes once more. Her eyes tended to move in quite random patterns or go to the top of her head.

xoxo

Jay fingered the hem of her cardigan, the spaces between where the buttons bonded the two halves of the front.

She walked across cracked bitumen, big brick building at her back – the school. The schoolyard was deserted; wads of grey cloud padded the sky.

Her mother sat inside, a chair in her daughter's classroom for a scheduled Parent-Teacher interview.

Jay kicked at the bitumen.

xoxo

Starr found herself inexplicably transported, cold wind on her neck, her face, nagging at her ankles, hair blowing into her face. "Jay," she called, but the girl did not see her, threw some gravel she had earlier bent to retrieve as far as she could to the opposite end of the yard.

Starr walked to the brick building and peered in a window, blocked partly by children's pictures tacked to the glass with a sort of tacking gum.

Jay's mother watched the teacher, nervous for her child, a frown firmly pasted onto her features.

The teacher sat leant on the front desk, file folder in hand.

Starr turned away from the window. She lurched forward, eyes frantically searching the empty yard. "Jay?" she called, raising her voice, the feeling of panic taking hold in her chest as though it were a depressing weight.

xoxo

She stood in the centre of a long room, the ceiling so high, the gleam of polished floorboards lost underneath the scuff marks and dust. The room kept records in boxes in shelves.

Starr's face worked in confusion, un-alone in the room for the two others, a woman and a man, perusing through the expansive records.

The woman spoke to the man, read out names, dates and bits and pieces, snatches that stood out to her; the man busy at another shelf. "Has she returned her answer to you?"

The man frowned concertedly and looked around.

"You have asked her?"

"I don't dance," the man told her, somewhat annoyed, impatient.

The woman stepped away from the shelf, left the box she had been rifling through, the lid open. She laughed, her smile genuine.

The man paused in what he was doing to observe her.

She held out a hand.

"I don't dance," he said again, knowing that he could not win this way.

She arranged his hands on her shoulders, peeking down at his feet, and smiled.

xoxo

Starr opened her eyes. They stung for a moment. "Does the girl have internet access? At school or the mother's?"

Jarod frowned. "Why does it matter? Do you know how many homes are connected to the net?"

"I don't want to know statistics, I want to know if this home is connected."

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm not sure."

xoxo

Jarod replaced the receiver and stepped out of the public phone booth. "She has. The home is connected."

Starr turned on the spot. "Shit!"

She was Jarod's daughter, a Pretender like him.

xoxo

Mo worked at the computer to bring up something, anything. Someone had done this thing properly.

xoxo

"What are you saying?" Nia demanded. "That some fucking corporation stole my daughter because you are her father?"

Jarod shot her a pained look, indicating that she should lower her voice. "Nothing is sure at this stage."

xoxo

"I've got her e-mail account," Mo informed the group, scrolling down the page.

From what they were able to recover, it seemed she had been writing to an unknown persons over the net.

Jarod paced, frustrated, but it was not helping Mo in identifying who this unknown persons may in fact be.

Jay, posing as a twelve year old, had written quite extensively to a fifteen year old boy, striking up a quick friendship.

"She liked him," Starr spoke through her hands. "She liked him so she lied, and now she's gone to meet him." She rubbed her hands down her cheeks. "Find the boy, find Jay. He's fourteen, going on fifteen."

She rifled through the various printouts, Jarod breathing down her neck.

Ethan spoke with Nia in the kitchen.

"There's no evil corporation, just a girl who likes a boy." Starr sighed, tired.

It was another hour until they were able to produce an address for the computer that had been receiving her mail, two addresses. The first was residential, the second a school.

The boy's name was Cross Scanlon.

xoxo

Jarod put in a call to some old friends and drove with Nia, Ethan and Mo to Cross' school. Starr allowed Doone to drive her, sleeping most of the way.

The FBI Missing Persons Unit met them in the car park, briefed them on what they had already got, having spoken limitedly with the school. They were still in negotiation, and they had dispatched a unit to the mother's flat.

The mother, single, informed the FBI that her son had been missing for some time now. She had been worried, but she needed the money his support, the money his father paid, brought in, so she couldn't report him missing to the police. She wouldn't be able to pay the rent, she'd lose the flat.

That was where they hit a dead end.

xoxo

Nia sat on the toilet, bent over, and cried. Her Jay was gone.

* * *

**2008**

Thomas worked in the Post Office sorting mail. It was nothing so exciting, nothing so special, but it kept him a low profile and gave him money to live.

He had lost the better part of seven years, but he was alive. Jason was not big on the explanations side of things.

xoxo

The department store found him in disbelief and awe. Parker stood not more than twelve feet from him. He remembered Parker. They had been engaged to marry. He moved to approach her, only the boy got there first, tugging on her hand. "I want this one," he said, brandishing a book.

Thomas felt his heart sink, the whole Titanic experience, snapped in two and down it goes.

Parker frowned at the choice – robots – but he had made his mind firmly up. He would not have any other, so she was forced to resign. She would get his book for him.

He smiled happily, and bounced up and down on the spot. "I love you, big sis!" he exclaimed in that little kid voice.

Parker sighed, exasperated, and strode away for the registers. "One item, I said, Reagan. I would get you one item. A toy if you had liked. You chose a book. One item only."

Reagan frowned and bounded after her.

* * *

"No! No, let him go!" Jay struggled against Jarod's hold, watching as several Agents secured Cross. "I love him!" They were taking him away. "I love you!" she shouted up the hall. "Cross, I love you! Don't tell them anything."

xoxo

Jay sat in the interview room, stroking a stuffed zebra. The woman would ask questions and she would simply ignore them all. She was not going to say anything about the boy.

Jarod did not know what he should do.

xoxo

Jay sat cross-legged on her bed and read magazines and did not do her homework and her mother could not make her.

Nia sat at the kitchen table and stared at the handset. Should she ring him? She did not have the answer. She watched the phone and willed him to ring her first.

* * *

Catherine laughed, her head on Sydney's shoulder. "Ask her," she managed through her laughter at his dancing. He was hopeless.


End file.
